Emotional development

Emotional development, emergence of the experience, expression, understanding, and regulation of emotions from birth and the growth and change in these capacities throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. The development of emotions occurs in conjunction with neural, cognitive, and behavioral development and emerges within a particular social and cultural context.

Infancy

The expression of emotions during infancy promotes the transition from complete dependency to autonomy. The expression of interest promotes exploration and cognitive development. Social (intentional) smiles and other expressions of joy promote social interaction and healthy attachment relationships with primary caregivers. The expression of sadness encourages empathy and helping behaviour, and the expression of anger signals protest and discomfort. Infants’ unique tendency to experience and express particular emotions and the threshold for expressing those emotions is usually referred to as their temperament or characteristic emotionality.

Researchers generally agree that neonatal (nonintentional) smiles are present at birth and that social smiling and emotional expressions of interest appear as early as six weeks of age. By four to five months of age, infants selectively smile at familiar faces and at other infants, and their caregivers begin to share positive emotional exchanges with them.

Researchers disagree in their explanations of the development and time of emergence of discrete negative emotional expressions. Consistently with the view that infants express negative emotions in early infancy, scientists have shown that infants perceive and respond differentially to the negative emotional expressions (e.g., sadness, anger) of others by the age of four months.

During the second six months of life, as infants gain rudimentary cognitive and memory capacities, they begin to express particular emotions based on context. Emotions begin to emerge dynamically as the infant begins to take a more direct role in emotional exchanges with caregivers. The emotional bond with the caregiver is increasingly important, as infants seek support for exploration and look for signals of danger.

Toddlerhood and early childhood

During the toddler period, in conjunction with rapid maturation of the frontal lobes and the limbic circuit in the brain, recognition of the self emerges. As a result, the toddler strives to become more independent, and the expression of anger and defiance increases in that struggle for autonomy. The ability to differentiate the self from others also promotes basic empathetic behaviour and moral understanding. By the end of the second year of life, toddlers respond to negative signals from others, and they have specific emotional responses to their own negative actions. The emotions that emerge with a rudimentary conception of the self are often called self-conscious emotions and include shame, embarrassment, guilt, and pride. Some self-conscious emotions, such as pride and guilt, do not emerge until toddlers and young children have learned to conceptualize internalized standards of behaviour.

As children enter preschool, they begin to label their own emotions and rely on discourse about emotions within the family to facilitate their understanding of basic emotions. Young children first distinguish happiness from negative emotions and then begin to distinguish negative emotions such as sadness, anger, and fear from each other. They begin to recognize these emotions in facial expressions, and then, as they enter middle childhood, they begin to understand situational determinants of emotions. An understanding of emotional subjectivity also develops as children learn that what makes one child happy may not make another child feel the same way.

The emergence of emotional self-regulation is particularly important during early childhood and occurs in the context of family and peer relationships. Open expression of positive emotions and warm, supportive relationships between parents and children promote effective emotional self-regulation. On the other hand, frequent expression of negative emotions in the family and harsh, punitive disciplinary responses increase the experience of distressing and dysregulated emotions that may lead to psychopathology. Appropriate peer relationships characterized by shared play activities are also important for the development of emotional regulation during early childhood. Children gain emotional understanding and the capacity for empathetic and helping behaviour from well-regulated emotional exchanges with peers.

Middle and late childhood

During middle and late childhood, stable self-concepts based on the child’s typical emotional experiences emerge. With the increased capacity for self-reflection, children gain an understanding of their self-conscious emotions. As a result, the consistent experience of patterns of self-conscious emotions has an impact on the child’s self-concept. For example, the tendency to experience shame rather than guilt in response to negative transgressions affects the child’s emergent self-esteem and may encourage a tendency to respond with aggression or violence.

Also during middle and late childhood, children begin to understand that a single situation or event can lead to the experience of multiple, mixed emotions. For example, older children understand that a goodbye party for a sibling who will leave for college is likely to be both a happy and a sad event for the child and his sibling. This capacity likely emerges with the cognitive capacity to understand multiple aspects of a situation, called decentration.

Children also learn emotional display rules as they progress through middle and late childhood. For example, a child learns to look happy even though she feels upset when a friend or family member gives her an undesirable gift. The use of display rules tends to increase as children begin to consider what consequences their actions may have for others. Display rules are used judiciously, and the likelihood of suppressing negative emotion depends on a number of factors, including the child’s gender, the likely recipients of the expression, the specific context, and the child’s cultural milieu.

Adolescence

With adolescence comes an additional struggle for autonomy and increased time spent with peers and less time spent with the family. Adolescents become less emotionally dependent on their parents, but this emotional autonomy often emerges after a period of conflict and increased experience of negative emotions. Young adolescents often experience more negative affect than younger children, but the negative affect often decreases during the high school years. However, girls often experience a longer period of elevated negative affect than boys. Adolescents tend to experience more extreme emotions, both negative and positive, than their parents even in response to the same event.

The rise in negative emotional experiences during early adolescence emerges in conjunction with the capacity for abstract thinking. Adolescents often experience emotional distress in response to ambiguous and imagined romantic exchanges, and their capacity to experience complex and diverse emotions further promotes the development of abstract thinking. As adolescents grapple with increasingly abstract and complex social problems, they often seek a stable peer group as the context for emotional management. Positive peer relationships emerge from the recognition of equality and the tendency to offer emotional support. Adolescents who are not accepted by their peers face numerous risks, including school dropout and delinquency. Even adolescents who are accepted by peers and have close friends often show an increase in negative emotions such as anger and anxiety in the peer context during adolescence. Overall, positive and supportive peer relations during adolescence promote healthy emotional development and mental health as the adolescent enters adulthood.

Dating relationships also become prominent during adolescence, but young adolescents may still have difficulty understanding that one person can evoke different and conflicting emotional responses. Therefore, dating during adolescence is often characterized by extreme emotional variability. Dating partners are also prone to experiencing jealousy, particularly when they make errors in determining the intent of their partner’s actions.

Identity development is important for adolescents as they approach adulthood. When adolescents or young adults are exploring many identity options, they often have high levels of anxiety but show interest in exploring those options. Adolescents who make an early commitment to a particular identity, usually an identity promoted by their family, have low levels of anxiety and do not experience much conflict in their family relationships. Adolescents who are not exploring identity options tend to have low levels of motivation and often appear bored or apathetic. They have poorer peer relationships and are at greatest risk for mental-health problems during adulthood. Finally, young adults who have achieved a stable sense of identity tend to be more empathetic and are more successful at managing their emotions.